Friday, January 11, 2008

It's not just the story of one, the first number, but the story of how humanity developed the concept of numbers itself: how organized warfare and powerful monarchies created the need for really big numbers, how zero revolutionized mathematical thinking, how taxes and accounting led to the changeover from Roman numerals to the Arabic ones we use today (numerals that are, in fact, Indian, and not Arabic at all). Terry Jones hosts this short BBC documentary as whimsical and cheeky as you'd expect from a Monty Python alum.